The trend has been confirmed for many months now: France, which just a few years ago could boast a dynamic birth rate, is sinking into the same demographic winter as its German and Italian neighbours. Aware of the problem and its many implications, the government has been looking into the issue, and President Macron announced back in January 2024 that he wanted to make “demographic rearmament” one of his key priorities. A reform of ‘birth leave’ has just been passed by the national assembly with this in mind. But with this law, MPs are also pursuing the questionable goal of improving gender equality—which is incompatible with promoting birth rates and motherhood.
Until not so long ago, France was an exception in Europe, with a birth rate that allowed it to just about achieve generational replacement. This is no longer the case, and the publication of birth figures by the National Institute of Statistics (INSEE), month after month, reveals a sad record in the collapse of births.
There is no mystery about this: successive governments have relentlessly dismantled the generous family support system established in France in 1945. The most serious attacks came from the Socialists, who broke with the principle of universality and made benefits means-tested, thereby undermining one of the founding principles of French family policy.
We must also ask ourselves some deeper questions. Why do people have children and plan for the future? For that, ‘all you need is love,’ as the song says—on both an individual and a collective level. And Emmanuel Macron’s France is sorely lacking in this. The future is bleak, the country is mired in stagnation, and the generations of childbearing age end up having other ‘priorities’—encouraged by a prevailing mindset that discourages having children.
Today, family support in France consists of a heavy and complex arsenal, increasingly designed not for families but to satisfy the whims of civil servants. A family policy, as Orbán’s government in Hungary has clearly understood, is not just about accounting calculations and tax measures; it is also and above all about a culture of family.
The introduction of ‘birth leave,’ which MPs have just finalised, proves how much this family culture is lacking. It is presented as a ‘new right’ for parents. In addition to existing measures, it should allow both women and men to take one to two months’ additional leave after the birth of a child. Everything has been done to ensure that both parents cannot take it at the same time. The idea is that one parent takes over from the other—thereby considering parents as interchangeable when it comes to their child.
Each parent is entitled to the leave and can use it within nine months of the child’s birth. It is therefore in addition to existing leave: maternity leave; three days’ paternity leave for the father at the time of birth; 25 days’ paternity leave also at the time of birth; and parental leave, which allows one of the two parents to suspend or reduce their professional activity until the child is three years old, in return for a reduced allowance.
In France, public spending on families has long since ceased to be seen as an investment in the future. The birth leave measure will therefore be financed by cutting back on other family benefits: the increase in family allowances, granted to children from the age of 14, will be postponed until the age of 18, allowing the state to scrape together a few precious hundred million euros, which will place a slightly heavier burden on the shoulders of parents of teenagers.
The problem is that with this reform, the government was trying to kill two birds with one stone: encouraging people to have children and, above all—the most important issue and the one with the strongest ideological significance in its eyes—promoting gender equality and the sharing of parental responsibilities within couples.
The minister behind the reform defends a measure of “professional equality between women and men, given the difficulties of balancing professional and personal life.” The minister for gender equality, Aurore Bergé, points out that women’s careers suffer successive setbacks when they have one or more children. The aim is therefore to “involve both parents from an early age. It’s good for the children, it’s good for the parents, and it’s also good in terms of equality, the division of tasks and society’s outlook,” argues Bergé. Is this what families want? Not at all. You only have to browse social media or read the comments in the press to see how dissatisfied those most affected—parents—are.
Several opinion polls conducted ahead of the parliamentary debates showed that the main demand from parents was for parental leave to be extended until the child reaches the age of three, mainly taken by women, who ultimately want nothing more than a little more time to be able to raise their young children better—rather than rushing back into the ruthless arena that is the world of work. Similarly, part-time work should no longer be considered morally inferior if it allows women to better manage the constraints of personal and professional life for the greater benefit of all family members.
If there is one time when the question of sharing parental responsibilities is nothing pressing, it is in the first few months of a baby’s life—take it from a mother. But we cannot expect Emmanuel Macron to understand much about family dynamics. Later, when the child grows up, becomes a teenager, an adult in the making, the question may legitimately arise of giving more space to the father in a society that has become a kind of matriarchy where fathers, embodying authority and openness to the world, are asked to keep quiet and disappear. But in the first months of life, the baby needs its mother, with whom it has been physically one for nine long months.
It is very kind to want to give Daddy a little more subsidised time to enjoy changing nappies, but no government incentive will change the fact that it is the mother who has experienced the pain, who must repair her body damaged by childbirth, who sometimes breastfeeds, and who needs time to adjust to her new life and the other new life that is beginning alongside her. As always, these supposedly egalitarian policies actually aim to render invisible the irreducible specificity of women—that of giving life.
For now, the measure is set to come into force in January 2026, after review by the senate. In other words, it may never see the light of day, given the pace of French politics in recent times. If the reform is abandoned, we can only hope that it will soon be replaced by provisions that are more in line with the needs of families.
New ‘Birth Leave’: A Nightmare for French Parents
Neil Dodhia de Pixabay
You may also like
How the West Enables the Persecution of Egypt’s Copts
Trade preferences, migration cooperation, and security assistance should be conditioned on measurable progress in the human rights area, Coptic Solidarity’s Lindsay Rodriguez says.
The Portuguese Centre-Right Is Unfit for Purpose
When the moment of truth arrived, the “centre-right” once again preferred to work with the Left, a mistake it will come to regret.
German Bishops and the Specter of Schism: How Did It Come to This?
Elected to heal divisions, Pope Leo XIV may instead be remembered as the pontiff under whom the most serious Catholic schism since the Reformation emerged.
The trend has been confirmed for many months now: France, which just a few years ago could boast a dynamic birth rate, is sinking into the same demographic winter as its German and Italian neighbours. Aware of the problem and its many implications, the government has been looking into the issue, and President Macron announced back in January 2024 that he wanted to make “demographic rearmament” one of his key priorities. A reform of ‘birth leave’ has just been passed by the national assembly with this in mind. But with this law, MPs are also pursuing the questionable goal of improving gender equality—which is incompatible with promoting birth rates and motherhood.
Until not so long ago, France was an exception in Europe, with a birth rate that allowed it to just about achieve generational replacement. This is no longer the case, and the publication of birth figures by the National Institute of Statistics (INSEE), month after month, reveals a sad record in the collapse of births.
There is no mystery about this: successive governments have relentlessly dismantled the generous family support system established in France in 1945. The most serious attacks came from the Socialists, who broke with the principle of universality and made benefits means-tested, thereby undermining one of the founding principles of French family policy.
We must also ask ourselves some deeper questions. Why do people have children and plan for the future? For that, ‘all you need is love,’ as the song says—on both an individual and a collective level. And Emmanuel Macron’s France is sorely lacking in this. The future is bleak, the country is mired in stagnation, and the generations of childbearing age end up having other ‘priorities’—encouraged by a prevailing mindset that discourages having children.
Today, family support in France consists of a heavy and complex arsenal, increasingly designed not for families but to satisfy the whims of civil servants. A family policy, as Orbán’s government in Hungary has clearly understood, is not just about accounting calculations and tax measures; it is also and above all about a culture of family.
The introduction of ‘birth leave,’ which MPs have just finalised, proves how much this family culture is lacking. It is presented as a ‘new right’ for parents. In addition to existing measures, it should allow both women and men to take one to two months’ additional leave after the birth of a child. Everything has been done to ensure that both parents cannot take it at the same time. The idea is that one parent takes over from the other—thereby considering parents as interchangeable when it comes to their child.
Each parent is entitled to the leave and can use it within nine months of the child’s birth. It is therefore in addition to existing leave: maternity leave; three days’ paternity leave for the father at the time of birth; 25 days’ paternity leave also at the time of birth; and parental leave, which allows one of the two parents to suspend or reduce their professional activity until the child is three years old, in return for a reduced allowance.
In France, public spending on families has long since ceased to be seen as an investment in the future. The birth leave measure will therefore be financed by cutting back on other family benefits: the increase in family allowances, granted to children from the age of 14, will be postponed until the age of 18, allowing the state to scrape together a few precious hundred million euros, which will place a slightly heavier burden on the shoulders of parents of teenagers.
The problem is that with this reform, the government was trying to kill two birds with one stone: encouraging people to have children and, above all—the most important issue and the one with the strongest ideological significance in its eyes—promoting gender equality and the sharing of parental responsibilities within couples.
The minister behind the reform defends a measure of “professional equality between women and men, given the difficulties of balancing professional and personal life.” The minister for gender equality, Aurore Bergé, points out that women’s careers suffer successive setbacks when they have one or more children. The aim is therefore to “involve both parents from an early age. It’s good for the children, it’s good for the parents, and it’s also good in terms of equality, the division of tasks and society’s outlook,” argues Bergé. Is this what families want? Not at all. You only have to browse social media or read the comments in the press to see how dissatisfied those most affected—parents—are.
Several opinion polls conducted ahead of the parliamentary debates showed that the main demand from parents was for parental leave to be extended until the child reaches the age of three, mainly taken by women, who ultimately want nothing more than a little more time to be able to raise their young children better—rather than rushing back into the ruthless arena that is the world of work. Similarly, part-time work should no longer be considered morally inferior if it allows women to better manage the constraints of personal and professional life for the greater benefit of all family members.
If there is one time when the question of sharing parental responsibilities is nothing pressing, it is in the first few months of a baby’s life—take it from a mother. But we cannot expect Emmanuel Macron to understand much about family dynamics. Later, when the child grows up, becomes a teenager, an adult in the making, the question may legitimately arise of giving more space to the father in a society that has become a kind of matriarchy where fathers, embodying authority and openness to the world, are asked to keep quiet and disappear. But in the first months of life, the baby needs its mother, with whom it has been physically one for nine long months.
It is very kind to want to give Daddy a little more subsidised time to enjoy changing nappies, but no government incentive will change the fact that it is the mother who has experienced the pain, who must repair her body damaged by childbirth, who sometimes breastfeeds, and who needs time to adjust to her new life and the other new life that is beginning alongside her. As always, these supposedly egalitarian policies actually aim to render invisible the irreducible specificity of women—that of giving life.
For now, the measure is set to come into force in January 2026, after review by the senate. In other words, it may never see the light of day, given the pace of French politics in recent times. If the reform is abandoned, we can only hope that it will soon be replaced by provisions that are more in line with the needs of families.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
Ireland Is Playing With Holy Fire
What We Lose When We Abandon the Classics
A Conservative Welfare State for a People with a Long Memory